


Fragments of Heleus

by lyricsaboutcats



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, Drabbles, F/M, Flash Fic, Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-03-04 13:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13365597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricsaboutcats/pseuds/lyricsaboutcats
Summary: A collection of mostly self contained drabbles featuring various characters in Andromeda. Tags will be updated with each new installment.Chapter 1-2: DrackChapter 3: Kallo and SuviChapter 4: Sara Ryder-------------------





	1. Nakmor Drack

On Elaaden, Drack kneels in dry sand and rips a piece of armor off a scavenger, tossing it away and pulling at broken belts and clasps. The dead turian's plates have crumbled beneath the weight of Drack's blood rage, already brittle as a side effect of cryo-stasis degeneration. It still takes far too long to find the stolen datadisc that he is looking for.  
  
He tucks it into his armor when he finds it.  
  
And when Drack is done with the turian he stays in position for a moment, leaning over deep cerulean hues. He breathes deeply, ignoring the acrid scent of dextro blood and the pain that whispers along his spine. His fists clench and he rushes on to the next one.  
  
A salarian, hiding behind a shuttle. Wide eyes, colorful face.  
  
Drack's fist slams into it and she falls, with a bullet ripping through her culturally valuable forehead as a final insult when she hits the ground. The splash of green is a memory of the blanket his granddaughter used to wrap herself with, seeping into the sand.  
  
Another breath, with more pain this time.  
  
He should probably stop charging into these assholes. One more, he tells himself silently, and then he will stop to assess the damage. There is more blood, rushing with the heat of Elaaden's sun, and he can taste it in the back of his throat when he roars.  
  
Another turian. Rough plates, ripping against skin.  
  
An asari.  
  
Another salarian.  
  
A splash of green.  
  
Everything is punctuated by the shot in the head, almost rhythmically. And Ryder jogs to join Drack when it is over, grinning wildly through the glass of her helmet. She takes it off, tucking it under her arm, and her sniper rifle hangs loosely at her back. The sun of Elaaden reflects violently across her armor.  
  
"No sympathy, old man," she calls out in a swirl of dust.  
  
He glares down at her and hands her five datadiscs. "Was I asking for it, kid?"  
  
She hesitates, unsure at first, and then winks up at him. "The exiles were," she replies. "And they're not getting it," she adds sweetly.  
  
The corpses receive a very solid kick beneath her boot, and then she moves on. Drack drapes her in his shadow to protect her from the heat.  
  
Sara Ryder is the Pathfinder of the Ark Hyperion, and she is insane. Any human who can do as much damage as she does must be a little off. But he does more damage with her than alone and they both like to shoot things. It is an uncomplicated friendship.  
  
They drive through the wastes of Elaaden, cleansing it of everything they can find. She is a storm of imprecise violence and flat one-liners, and he says very little. But there is a combining krogan roar and human yell whenever they pass a Kett camp, because there is always another waiting in the sandy wastes of the western hemisphere. And Ryder always stops.  
   
She grins at Drack when they get out of the terrain vehicle, deeply appreciative of his enthusiasm for simple brutalities, and a funny feeling creeps through the pain guarding his nerves. Drack snorts and pushes the feeling away before it is even a thought. He has scabs on his ass older than her.  
  
And Drack has been around long enough to know the expression on her face while she fights; that the promise of battle running through her mind is the only thing that can still her thoughts.  
  
Ryder rushes at the Kett. She rips into an alien soldier, blood gushing past her blade.  
  
 The asari trailing behind them offers biotic support from behind cover. She muses about violence on the comm. She does so playfully, but alarm occasionally threatens the edges of her words.  
  
Sara rises up into the air and then dives back toward another Kett; omni-blade crackling electricity against her armor, tears staining the edges of her eyes. She is deathly calm.  
  
Danger has lost its meaning for her. Drack knows this because he is the same. He takes a deep breath, and his own lack of redundant systems shoots white spots across his vision. He joins her with a roar.  
  
And there is pain everywhere, staining everything he touches. But his thoughts grow quiet as they fight.


	2. Nakmor Drack Part II

 

* * *

 

The korkro roots are topped with green shoots when he stuffs them into a pot next to a chunk of eiroch. Drack glowers at them, and then covers everything with broth.

His _ru'shan_ is still at the Nexus. It's a thought that keeps him up at night more than nerve damage ever could, and he is tired.

And Kesh is so small, he thinks to himself before he remembers that she is grown with hundreds of years of experience. The thought does not comfort him as much as it should. Blood is far too easy to lose, like hearts and livers and hands. Whenever his omni-tool rings with a message from her a shot of adrenaline tears through him, through muscles and woven steel that pinches like barbed wire curling around his spine. It is one of the few times he checks the damn thing.

He is too old for this, he thinks whenever he does. 

He piles a few more ingredients into the pot and sets the roast in the oven. It will take eleven hours to cook, if only because someone will inevitably open it to grab a bite. He can already see the heat rushing away in an updraft of impatience.

He smiles a little bit as he thinks of it.

On the ship called the Tempest, without a rifle in his hands, Nakmor Drack is _The Cook_. If anyone has a problem with the menu, their survival instincts prevent them from complaining. A wide array of dishes greet each crew member who opens the fridge in the galley kitchen. And Drack finds that there is a certain level of satisfaction in watching their eyes widen whenever they take a bite of something new; a certain amount of pride at their thwarted preconceptions.

He's very good at his job.

Aside from being the cook, Drack is also _Badass Ship Grandpa_ , according to Pellesaria B'Sayle, and _Doing Far Too Much For His Condition_ according to the lovely Doctor Lexi T'Perro. Their pilot is afraid of him, a secret he hides not well at all, skirting around at the edges of the dinner hour and sneaking bits of leftover meals from the fridge with long trembling fingers. Several extra helpings are left on small plates for him, each one easy to snatch away in the dark of midnight.

And in the early hours of the morning, when sleep still threatens the edges of Drack's eyes and the pain clings at its most portent, a small human figure weaves around him like a klixen while he finishes making breakfast. Sara drinks strong black tea with too much sugar, her eyes full of mirth, and laughs out words like _oh won't you dear_ and _please Very Handsome Sir_ while he waves her away with a massive hand that holds no ire.

"I don't bake, kid," he rumbles with a gravelly voice, flipping a pile of eggs now that the roast is in the oven. "I cook."

Sara presses her hands together. "Come on, Drack. Cinnamon rolls are the best kind of cooking."

"No," he says with a glance at her. "They're the squishy kind."

Pausing at the counter next to him to pour more tea, she stops flitting and absently lifts a hand to push her hair behind her shoulders. "Is there really a squishy kind of cooking?" she asks, watching the tea slip out of the pot.

He snorts and thrusts his crest toward her, eyes narrowed and very close to hers. "Yeah," he rumbles. "It's called baking."

Sara starts in surprise, pulling back with a delighted laugh, and he smirks at her. She turns away to grab a cup of coffee for him. 

A strong breakfast is fed to everyone: eggs and leafy damn vegetables. 

And, every once in a while, squishy little cinnamon rolls.


	3. Kallo Jath

  
Kallo flies the Tempest in the same way that a musician might play a familiar sonata, with his fingers brushing along soft lights with an elaborate nonchalance, as if they are ivory keys he has known forever. He contemplatively runs his hand along a screen that appears in front of him and the ship relinquishes itself to his memories of star maps with a steady bearing toward Eos.   
  
And Sorenna pulls a metal panel away from his console as he works. She ducks her head down into a rainbow of wires and circuits. She grunts impatiently when smoke inevitably begins to trail around her, shifting her body in a small attempt to avoid it until it rises in wisps and then clouded tendrils around her. It is acrid and bitter on Kallo's tongue whenever he breathes it in.  
  
"You're going to burn your finger," he tells her, sighing a little in his chair.   
  
His mouth drops into a grim frown as he watches. Sorenna has never listened to him and she is never going to. The smoke billows around them both in a swell of clouds until she pulls her body back with a curse and a shake of her hand. Her fingers are seared with electricity.  
  
"I told you," Kallo says softly.  
  
Suvi asks nearby, "Kallo, What on Earth are you doing?"  
  
Kallo blinks and the smoke is gone. His hand descends from the light of the controls, his fist knocking at the panel that has been firmly in place for six hundred years. He looks over at Suvi where the fractal of their friendship expands around her in a warm history that collapses into an anchor for the present and a smile on his face.  
  
"Just reminiscing," he replies.  
  
Suvi tilts her head, studying him for a moment, but then returns to work.  
  
And Kallo remembers everyone almost instantly whenever he sees them, only missing the smallest of conversational beats. It is a flicker behind his eyes, stacking and organizing memories that are sharp and cut him at the most inopportune times. He closes himself up as fast as he can and smiles at everyone, very brightly. He gossips with Suvi and watches batarian soap operas with Sara. His uniform is prim and maintained to the point of meticulous absurdity while he does his best to keep from bleeding away into the past while the world happens in the swelling expanse of the present.   
  
Yet he can't help but ask Sorenna not to hurt herself in the circuitry, telling himself that if she ever takes his advice he will know for sure that he has gone too far and too mad. And he tells himself that's why he lets himself drift a little, just like with Teon down in the hangar and O'Connell working on the plumbing in the showers. Sometimes he is afraid that he is lying to himself, and that he will get lost in the past that he isn't quite sure how to let go of.  
  
But Suvi holds her arms out to him every morning, elated to see him at the breakfast table. "Good morning, Bestie," she says with a wink and a friendly embrace.  
  
And Kallo holds onto her, anchoring himself and believing in the present a little bit more each day. He tells her the pieces of ship gossip that she missed while she slept.  
  
That's what best friends are for, he thinks to himself, and he drifts a little less.  
  



	4. Sara Ryder

"I am happy to give you anything you desire," Tann told her, standing behind his desk. There was no brightness in his voice. "After my previous experiences with humans helping one another, I would not trust you to someone else."  
  
Sara's brow lifted in disbelief. "You'd really give me anything at all?"  
  
Tann nodded, very coldly.  
  
The director of the Initiative was true to his word, and when she returned to his quarters after her debriefing with Colonial Affairs she found a small offering of human food and drink in the kitchen and a complete absence of company. Sara took a plate of it for herself, staring at nothing in particular while she ate, listening to the distinct lack of sound in the room and smelling coffee with every small breath. Halfway through her meal she absently identified the food she was eating as rice.  
  
She set her fork down and looked around. It was a marvel, really, that the world could become so silent. Even the hum of the station was missing in the warm salarian quarters. And a part of her mind wondered if Tann had specifically wanted to live in a place like this, or if it had been a mere coincidence. The apartment was luxuriously spacious but not opulently decorated, with only the large window and its view hinting that he had any real clout at all. The arms of the Nexus cradled a well of stars while she watched.  
  
She also wondered if he ever became tired of it, of the endless to-do list that was the Heleus cluster, or if being the director of the Andromeda Initiative was its own sort of heady reward. She suspected that it was the latter for him.  
  
Sara sighed at the view, and then at her coffee. She pushed it away along with her plate before it all overwhelmed her and stood up. She held her arms out and twirled a few times, closing her eyes and taking up empty space just because she could.  
  
_I've always liked the idea of space_ , Tann had told her before he sent her away. He hadn't seemed surprised by her request.  
  
In a few days the Tempest would be refueled, refitted with supplies, and then Sara and her crew --could they really even be called hers, subordinate as they were?-- would be whisked away to the next planet. The overwhelming feeling twirled with her, wrapping around her tightly. The Tempest, cramped and loud with its occupants, would fly to Voeld and an endless world of snow would greet her.  
  
Sara held her hands out as far as she could and twirled again. And when she became too dizzy to continue, she wrapped herself up in a blanket and sat down on a couch that appeared new and untouched. "Sam," she whispered, "are you still there?"  
  
"Yes. Of course, Pathfinder."  
  
"Could you go away for a while?"  
  
A chill swept through her. Everything inside of her was suddenly missing in response to her request. It slipped down her spine and melted away. And in the midst of being empty Sara thought of her father's expression when he had faded. She would have given anything to see her father again, distant as he was with his work. Distant as he was with any affection.  
  
Sara was completely alone.  
  
The tears started almost immediately, in the solitude and in the silence. She cried on the couch in a space where no one could find her, or see her fall apart completely.  
  
And that was all that she had wanted, and had so much trouble finding in the place called Heleus.  
  



End file.
